Insane?
by zenz3n
Summary: “So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here? Is Raven insane? She has some pretty convincing reasons why the answer has to be 'yes'.


I don't own the Teen Titans. That's DC Comics, WB, and Cartoon Network.

Mildly revised- corrected some typos and fixed the formatting the document editor here mucked up.

* * *

**Insane?**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

Here we go. "Because you say I'm a danger to society."

He snorted. I amused him, apparently. "That's a little disingenuous, don't you think? I'm not saying you're a danger. And we keep 'dangers to society' in jails, not here."

I rolled my eyes. "But those kinds of dangers aren't so...," I raised my shackled hands and made 'spooky' finger wiggles, "...so _scary _to Mr. And Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea."

He smiled. "Thank you, Walter Winchell." It was refreshing to have an interrogator who got my obscure references. I let a small curve bend the corner of my mouth. He caught it. He bowed his head to me in response. This one was sharp. "And of course," he continued, "we have asylums for the other sorts of dangers. You are in neither."

"Yes." I took the shadow of a smile off of my face. "So my imprisonment is tantamount to kidnapping, as well as illegal detention. I suggest you release me and get yourself a good lawyer before this gets any worse."

He shook his head. A little. "You are extremely consistent, Ms. Raven." He leaned back from the table where he sat, across from me. "How many times have we sat here?"

"None. I've never seen you before."

"No, Ms. Raven. This is our...," he looked down at the open laptop on the table, "fifty second session together."

I... am confused for a moment, but it's extremely brief. Nothing but mind games today, it seems. He's going with the Big Lie, and will try to get me to agree with the little ones later. I can see that much already. "No."

He tilted his head off to the side. "That's it? Just 'no'?" I sit and stare blankly at him. Quiet. Immobile. I can ignore the buzz buzz of liars very easily. I will not validate his lies with acknowledgment.

He tries to talk to me. He tries to make me listen. He gets up and walks away.

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

Here we go. "Because you say I'm a danger to society."

He looked blankly at me. "And how long have you been here?"

"Years."

"Years? Why do you say that?"

"It's the truth."

He shrugs. "Humor me. How do you know it's the truth?"

"Every year, on the winter solstice, I get a new interrogator. You're the fifth."

"Ms. Raven, I'm the only person who's had any therapy sessions with you. It hasn't been 'years'. Look at yourself in the mirror - you haven't aged."

I turn my head and look toward the mirror. It could be two way. It could be a holographic projector. It could lie. If I look, it will lie.

It's best not to look.

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

Here we go. "Because I signed the commitment papers."

He nodded, pursed his lips, hands making a peak in front of him. "Why?"

"I don't know."

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

"Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos!" And? Nothing?? It obviously showed on my face.

"That won't work." He gestured to the shackles holding my wrists. "They're charmed?... No, excuse me, the exact term is 'ensorcelled'. You do remember that, right?" That I didn't obviously showed on my face. "But surely you remember. You made the shackles yourself."

"What? Why are you lying?"

"You made them, Ms. Raven, when you had yourself committed."

A pause.

"Ms. Raven?"

A pause.

"Ms. Raven?"

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

Here we go. "Because you say I'm a danger to society."

"Why?"

"The Prophecy."

He leaned in a little. I don't know why. He must have read a briefing about it. "Tell me more."

I take in a breath. A deep breath. "My sixteenth birthday. I had had signs, and visitations, in the weeks leading up to the date, all warning me that on that day I would become the Portal for Trigon, my demon father, and he would destroy the world. And on that day I..."

He waited politely. "There is no judgment here. Go on."

"I folded like a house of cards and became the thing I despised, I became the Portal, I let Trigon into the world."

"And..."

"And he destroyed it."

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He took his index finger and poked his arm. "But I feel real enough. I think I haven't been destroyed. I could be wrong, though..."

I closed my eyes briefly, took another breath. "You said there wouldn't be judgment."

"I did not disavow disbelief or sarcasm, Ms. Raven."

"He. Destroyed. It."

"Was this destruction instantaneous? Did you take long to 'rebuild' it? Tell me more."

"Once he manifested himself, destruction was instant."

"And the 'repair'?"

"It took hours. The other Titans fought for hours until I was found and returned to fighting condition."

"Hmmm."

"That's portentous. And you mean?"

He smirked briefly. "By fighting condition you mean 'forced to remember your duty by your friends while you hid in a literal child's body'."

"So, you did read up."

A quick smile crossed his face, almost too quick to notice. "You're a fascinating read, Ms. Raven."

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

Here we go. "Because."

**xx xx xx**

"So, tell me, Ms. Raven: why are you here?"

"I signed the commitment papers. I'm insane."

"That's very interesting. Not many 'crazy people' – if you'll excuse the exact psychological classification – admit their illness." He smiled sweetly at me.

"I'm just special that way."

"Hmmm. So... _why_ do you say you're insane?"

"The Prophecy. If you'll excuse the exact psychological classification."

He guffawed. A genuine guffaw. "You're snarky today, Ms. Raven."

"Is 'snarky' a technical term, too?"

"The technical-iest. But you need a degree to understand it." He crossed his arms and leaned back into his chair. "And I'm keeping you from your explanation. Please continue."

I organized my thoughts. "First, you do know that I am a very powerful empath, in addition to my other abilities, correct?" He nodded. "I'll come back to that. The Prophecy happened on my sixteenth birthday. I easily walked into doing what I'd spent years telling myself I wouldn't and couldn't do, and let Trigon into the world. At that instant flesh became stone, water became fire, and the sky rained ash. I was reduced to the physical form of a child, while my team mates, who were not turned to stone, fought Trigon. Eventually Robin found me and rekindled a sense of... of duty within me, and I fought Trigon and banished him from this world." I paused to let the questions come.

"Go on, Ms. Raven. I am familiar with the basics of your tale."

"So I have been asking myself ever since: how could that happen? I mean, how could that work? The sun never moved in the sky, people frozen into stone... and all this in our physical universe. What happened on other worlds, like Tamaran? Did they become stone? That indicates a degree of power verging on the god-like, and what I know of Trigon, he was far from the Deity in power. Do you understand so far?"

"I am following you fine."

"Good. I am not sure if I'm saying everything I think I should. Interrupt me if you need clarification."

"I will."

"Good. I've thought and thought on this so much that I'm afraid I'll skip things I now consider obvious truths."

"I will interrupt if I become lost, Ms. Raven."

Good. He got my point. "So, I believe the effects of his arrival were limited to this planet. Well, when everything was 'restored' after Trigon's defeat, why did no one notice any discrepancies with extraterrestrial indicators? Surely there would be discrepancies in the place of the Earth in orbit, or the length of the day, or the location of satellites, or _something_. Someone would have noticed."

"So you believe that the physical laws of the universe were, uh, _broken_ in implausible ways?"

"Yes. Even the 'laws' of Trigon's realm were 'broken'. Why were the Titans exempt from the transformation to stone? I don't have that sort of power or skill, and certainly did not consciously cast a spell to do that."

He reached toward his keyboard. "There was a spell, I thought, cast on the Titans--"

"Strictly a containment spell. I wanted them away from me when I became the Portal." He nodded. "So, we return, and, I can't help but think about it. Again and again, I searched, and there are no reported discrepancies, not the smallest. I even checked on astrophysical research involving detection of subatomic particles, experiments where even infinitesimal differences in observation versus theory would raise some comment, and I - found - nothing."

He nodded again, then tilted his head, so stereotypically 'in thought' that I almost forgot my condition and smiled. But I didn't. "I thought I read about... Robin reported that you and he fought Slade some weeks before your birthday? Didn't--"

"Yes! More proof!" I had forgotten to mention that! "I certainly couldn't stop the flow of time throughout the universe. _I can't do that!_"

"I see your points, but, perhaps, if you didn't freeze time, have you considered that, maybe, you were, well, accelerated, or shifted sideways in time, as it were, so that you lived between seconds, if you will excuse the inexactness of my idea."

I let a small curve bend the corner of my mouth. He caught it. He bowed his head to me in response. This one was sharp. "If that was the case, then..._ What was the big deal? _ Trigon plots for centuries to come to Earth, just so he can rule a fractional-millisecond of an empire? Sure, it could go on for a million years, to his perception, but it's ultimately _pointless_! He rules _nothing_. It affects _nothing_! My purpose on Earth is ultimately petty!"

He nods. "And therefore, you're insane? I don't draw anything but the barest implication. And we do have multiple corroborating testimonials from your fellow Titans about what they all experienced in the fight against Trigon."

Maybe he didn't get it. "Occam's Razor shows that when multiple causes are investigated, the simplest is always right. As I said before, I am an empath. This is a known, independently observed power. And it's simpler to explain this Prophecy as a hallucination on my part, which I foisted on their minds with my telepathic powers."

"Well, we then get into questions of egocentrism--"

He wasn't getting it at all. "I can do that! It is a _known_! How do you explain the logical discontinuities and near-infinite power-projection of the alternate, false explanation! You can't! So it didn't happen! _It didn't happen!_ If it didn't happen then I imagined it. I constructed a false world which I forced over the minds of my friends. I am a clear and present danger to anyone around me."

He thought for just a moment. "What about that criminal, Slade? If he was found alive, resuscitated like a modern Lazarus, as it were, would that convince you of your sanity?"

I was about to let him know just how little faith I had in such an outrageous proposition, when there was a knock at the door of the room. He looked as shocked as I was. He turned to see, along with me, a wizened old face stick into the room. "My apologies for interrupting, Mr. Wilson," the old man said. "I have a very important communique for you."

The man - whose name was Wilson, and why did I never consider his name before - the man signaled the older gentleman to enter. The old man walked in with an almost butler-like dignity. "This is important, Wintergreen?" The old man nodded back, and handed Wilson a note. He read it, thought a moment, then waved the old man away without a look.

"When I'm done here, Wintergreen. After all," and he smiled reassuringly to me, "Ms. Raven's mental health is paramount."


End file.
